The optical design of a fundus camera contains several challenging requirements: The image needs to be sharp and evenly illuminated with brightness high enough to overcome noise in detection. The field-of-view should be wide enough to capture a large section of the retina. And practically the whole retina should be covered with as few images as possible. It is also desirable that imaging can be performed with undilated pupils, i.e. in a non-mydriatic way also in the case of children and babies. Often the examination should be done by a hand-held device in a non-contact manner. Finally, the device should typically be compact and easy to align with the eye during the imaging, and the working distance needs to be long enough.
In the prior art, these problems have not been fully overcome. Therefore, there is a clear need to improve the ophthalmoscopic camera.